Devil to Pay (Richard Delancey Novels, No. 2)

Rating:
Summary: This novel contains secret missions, duels, privateering
Review: In 1794 war with France gives Lt Richard Delancey his first active duty since the American Revolution. Delancey's previous naval career was undistiguished. He has no naval mentors, so he is pleased that his knowledge of French, gained through being a native of Guernsey, has lead to him to called on for a special mission landing secret agents in France.

Through no fault of his own, the secret mission further tarnishes his reputation and prospects. It leads to a duel. Reduced to his half-pay Delancey is ready to seize any opportunity.

A chance encounter leads to Delancey learning that the Captain of a customs vessel has been injured. He seizes his chance! He decides that if he carries the news to the Customs Collector for the Isle of Wight he may receive an interim appointment to replace the injured man.

It is not a great opportunity. His acting command only has a crew of 20. And his only hope of remuneration lies in figuring out how to outsmart the wily sm! ugglers. But at least he is at sea.

Delancey's brief experience in the world of intelligence pays off. He has first one, then two, then three early successes. Delancey's confidence returns. He has mastered this task sufficiently well that he realizes that the owners of the smuggling vessels will take steps to keep their vessels out of his grasp. Perhaps they will send them to other parts of the coast?

No, instead he is offered a much better job by a gentleman he suspects owns several smuggling vessels. He is offered the command of a private man of war, the 22 gun Nemisis, based in his home town of St Peter's Port.

Delancey has further adventures aboard the Nemesis, and ashore in France and Spain.

I'll close this review with two comments. I know of no other novel of this period that deal with the nautical aspect of collecting customs duty. I regret that this novel lay out of print for such a long time.

Rating:
Summary: Readable, very different from Hornblower
Review: This book deals with Lieutenant Richard Delancey's efforts to find a purpose and direction in his career after stagnating for several years. It is the second in a series, I didn't read the first one, but didn't feel like I'd lost much by skipping it.
For the first two-thirds of the book, the "purpose and direction" plot dominated (at least for me) the naval elements of the story. In fact, very little of the book covers dashing nautical adventure of the type C.S. Forester might have written--Most of it takes place on shore, and the ships seem to be just platforms and vehicles, rather than central elements. Naval battles barely intrude into the story at all.

As another reviewer commented, the last third of the book deals with a spy mission similar to the unfinished Hornblower novel. In effect, the book is four different "episodes" strung together. It is adequately good reading, but not brilliant. The most interesting part for me was watching Delancey grow in ability, find a purpose, and gain confidence in himself as an officer and a leader.

Not a brilliant book, but good enough to make me seek out others in the series (this is the first one I read). I'd give it three-and-a-half stars, if I could.

Rating:
Summary: Book No. 2 of the Richard Delancey series
Review: This novel, first published in the U.S. in 1973, jumps forward over 11 years from the end of book No. 1 in the series. The reader finds himself in the middle of a scene in 1794 with no knowledge of preceding actions. Richard Delancey is still a lieutenant - assigned to the Grafton, a hulk at permanent anchor, after some unexplained incident alluded to in the plot. A temporary assignment takes him back to Guernsey and the coast of France, but he then finds himself on the beach again, unemployed with no prospects.

Being in the right place at the right time, Delancey receives the temporary command of a Revenue Service cutter. His success leads to certain business interests offering him command of a privateer both in recognition of his abilities and as a means of removing him from the Revenue Service where he was a bit too successful. This provides Delancey with some profit, but also leaves him shipwrecked on the French coast and attempting to escape through Spain, just as the Spanish are entering the war. The remainder of the novel covers his flight through a hostile countryside, and action in Leon as he rejoins the Royal Navy.

The story is a mixture of action on land and at sea. Delancey has some interesting interactions with smugglers. Interaction with smugglers was also used in the plot of "Ramage and the Guillotine" by the late Dudley Pope.

Rating:
Summary: Book No. 2 of the Richard Delancey series
Review: This novel, first published in the U.S. in 1973, jumps forward over 11 years from the end of book No. 1 in the series. The reader finds himself in the middle of a scene in 1794 with no knowledge of preceding actions. Richard Delancey is still a lieutenant - assigned to the Grafton, a hulk at permanent anchor, after some unexplained incident alluded to in the plot. A temporary assignment takes him back to Guernsey and the coast of France, but he then finds himself on the beach again, unemployed with no prospects.

Being in the right place at the right time, Delancey receives the temporary command of a Revenue Service cutter. His success leads to certain business interests offering him command of a privateer both in recognition of his abilities and as a means of removing him from the Revenue Service where he was a bit too successful. This provides Delancey with some profit, but also leaves him shipwrecked on the French coast and attempting to escape through Spain, just as the Spanish are entering the war. The remainder of the novel covers his flight through a hostile countryside, and action in Leon as he rejoins the Royal Navy.

The story is a mixture of action on land and at sea. Delancey has some interesting interactions with smugglers. Interaction with smugglers was also used in the plot of "Ramage and the Guillotine" by the late Dudley Pope.

Rating:
Summary: Wooden action in wooden hulls
Review: Very little of this series, or this story in particular, takes place aboard ship. Parkinson clearly prefers life ashore to that afloat, his ships serving largely to move his wooden hero, Delancey, from one intrigue or action on land to another. Following an abortive raid on the Breton coast, Lt. Delancey, at loose ends again, suddenly becomes proactive and joins the coastal Revenue Service (as does Bolitho in the first volume of his much more exciting series by Alexander Kent). Eventually sent out of the way as a privateer, he runs into the shore and instantly constructs himself a spy mission (in effect this is the story Forester failed to complete in his novel, "Hornblower During the Crisis"). While crossing enemy territory Delancey gets into the most impossible situations and concocts one preposterous and elaborate cover story after another. It's fun to see how instantly inventive he is.

These are really stories of naval people, not of the British Navy in the Age of Sail. The few sailing episodes are precisely correct, as if from an instruction manual, worse still when Delancey is just imagining what must be happening elsewhere. The stories do highlight an unusual locale, the British Channel Islands (the "cow" islands: Jersey, Guernsey) just off the French coast. They are not romantic novels in any sense of the word, but plotted in a workmanlike fashion to go where the author wishes them to go, no more. There are too few characters introduced to successfully, suspensfully misdirect the reader from the traitors along the way. Parkinson, of all people, should have known to expand the roster to fill the time available. The volume has good sets of maps for each locale. The cover illustration is a more or less contemporary painting but has nothing to do with this story.